Prisons Peru

Otilia Polay will never forget her shock at seeing her son Victor after his 14 months of solitary confinement. The once-robust middle-aged man had lost 60 pounds, she said. He could barely see after having been imprisoned in the dark for so long. And he complained that security forces had beaten him so badly they had broken his collarbone. Even today, a year later, the convicted Tupac Amaru terrorist is restricted to a 6-by-6-foot space.

Otilia Polay will never forget her shock at seeing her son Victor after his 14 months of solitary confinement. The once-robust middle-aged man had lost 60 pounds, she said. He could barely see after having been imprisoned in the dark for so long. And he complained that security forces had beaten him so badly they had broken his collarbone. Even today, a year later, the convicted Tupac Amaru terrorist is restricted to a 6-by-6-foot space.

It looks like any other maximum security jail, with barbed wire, guard posts and attack dogs. However, for about 300 "Shining Path" guerrillas inside, Canto Grande prison is a "fascist concentration camp" in which the Maoist guerrillas have turned their cells into "combat trenches." While communism crumbles around the globe, it lives on in this prison where convicted guerrillas of the Shining Path movement live communally beneath giant murals of Marx, Lenin and Mao.

It looks like any other maximum security jail, with barbed wire, guard posts and attack dogs. However, for about 300 "Shining Path" guerrillas inside, Canto Grande prison is a "fascist concentration camp" in which the Maoist guerrillas have turned their cells into "combat trenches." While communism crumbles around the globe, it lives on in this prison where convicted guerrillas of the Shining Path movement live communally beneath giant murals of Marx, Lenin and Mao.